The BTC Company is taking important steps towards the implementation of blockchain technology. As part of its Living Lab testing activities, the BTC Company will start to cooperate with the Slovenian blockchain-based tech company OriginTrail. Although the cooperation will start in the BTC Logistics Centre, positive impact is expected for other initiatives of the BTC Company, as well.

The BTC Company, one of the leading regional commercial real estate developers and FMCG logistics providers, is taking concrete steps towards the implementation of blockchain technology in one of its business units. With some previous blockchain initiatives that emerged in the ABC Startup Accelerator, a globally positioned acceleration group with accelerators in BTC City Ljubljana, Munich, and Silicon Valley, the BTC Company has recognised the business potential of blockchain technology also for its own business activities.

As part of its Living Lab testing activities, the BTC Company will start to cooperate with the Slovenian blockchain-based tech company OriginTrail. The cooperation will start in the BTC Logistics Centre business unit as OriginTrail’s core expertise derives from this business sector. Mr Tomaž Levak, co-founder & CEO of OriginTrail: “OriginTrail is developing a purpose-built protocol for supply chains based on blockchain technology and is building a Trace Alliance for the early adoption of the protocol with companies from all over the world. The BTC Company has always provided one of the most cutting-edge innovative environments in Slovenia. We are excited to partner with them and together embark on the path to build the OriginTrail decentralised supply chain ecosystem.”

The supply chain is often presented as one of the best-use cases for blockchain as a trusted ledger, but the current decentralised solution cannot provide the needed level of performance, scalability, efficiency, and trust for interconnected data in supply chains. OriginTrail’s decentralised protocol is solving this challenge with an off-chain decentralised network. It is the only scalable solution for data management across complex supply chains through a purpose-built decentralised graph database. As a proof of concept, OriginTrail’s pilot project with the Chinese online food marketplace Yimishiji was recently awarded by the Walmart Food Safety Collaboration Center.

Such expertise is of course inherently connected with BTC Logistics Centre’s main market activities in the FMCG sector, where focus on short lead times and strict sales schedules are of primary importance for clients. As Mr Robi Košir, Director of the BTC Logistics Centre points out: “Delivering excellence in logistics to major regional food and beverage companies and grocery retailers is a very strong commitment for us. Not only because of our direct clients, but more importantly because of their clients and customers, as well. Consequently, all the initiatives that might improve the efficiency of our logistics processes are much appreciated. The deployment of blockchain technology in logistics sector could definitely be such an initiative.”

Moreover, according to Mr Damjan Kralj, member of the BTC Management Board and the Sales and Marketing Director of the BTC Company, the cooperation with OriginTrail brings other advantages to the BTC Company, as well: “BTC City’s harmonised area, consisting of varied programmes, target groups, as well as constructional, traffic, and technological infrastructure, has been recognised on the market as a stimuli-rich living lab environment for developing and testing all kinds of software and hardware solutions. In this light, the cooperation with OriginTrail is adding to the four existing living lab pillars, i.e. sustainable mobility, energy, information and communications technology, and retail, a new one with the focus on logistics. This opens an additional window of opportunity to attract new business partners who want to test their nascent solutions with us, where the common denominator for all five pillars could be the very promising blockchain technology. So, naturally, our next tactical step is to build a strong blockchain community in BTC City Ljubljana, which could not only benefit the parties involved, but sooner or later also society as a whole.”